Lisa listened in sullen silence, but she did listen, and it seemed to her that the words of Zinco were the words of wisdom. To lose her voice—her voice which was her fortune—and to lose her good looks, which alone had lifted her from the herd of peasants, living in penury, toiling from sunrise to sunset, unknown and ill-clad, and dying uncared for, save by creatures as poor and as hopeless as themselves! Yes, Zinco was right; that would indeed be foolishness, and not the way to win him whose love her sick soul longed for. Perhaps if she were a public singer, and all the world admired her, he would admire her too. He would see in the eyes of other men that she was handsome, and worthy to be admired. He would hear on the lips of other men that she was worthy of praise.
“I’ll get up,” she said, without lifting her tear-stained face from the pillow. “Go into the sala and wait for me. I won’t be long. You shall see I haven’t lost my voice.”
“Bene, benissimo, Si’ora,” cried the master, rubbing his fat little hands, “now she speaks like a woman of spirit. She is not going to give up the world for love, like Marc Antony at Actium.”
He shuffled off to the sitting-room, seated himself at the piano, and began to play the symphony of “Una Voce” with that grandly decisive style of a man who has played all his life in an orchestra. It was a refreshment to Lisa’s weary spirit to hear that sparkling music, light, gay, capricious as summer wavelets.
She joined her teacher at the piano in a much shorter time than a young Englishwoman would have needed to complete her toilet, yet she looked fresh enough in her southern beauty, and there were glittering water-drops in her hair which gave a suggestion of a young river goddess.
“Now, then, sir, play ‘Roberto’ and you will see if my voice is broken.”
She attacked the scena with wonderful dash and spirit, and was, in sporting phraseology, winning easily till she came to that C in alt—but here her voice snapped. She tried a second time, and a third time—but the note was gone. She gave a cry of rage, and then burst into tears.
“Ecco,” exclaimed Zinco, with a triumphant air, “that is what your love-sick nonsense has done for you. You have been singing as false as a prima donna at a café chantant in the Boulevard St. Michel, and your upper C is gone. It would have been worth £40 a week to you, but you have thrown it away.”
At this; Lisa continued her lamentation, deeply sorry for herself.
“There’s no use in crying,” said Zinco; “that only makes things worse. Bisogna sempre aver pazienza in questo mondo. You had better dry your tears and eat a beefsteak—bleeding—and drink a pint of port-beer. Malibran used to drink port-beer. In one of her great scenes she had her quart pot on the stage, hidden behind a set piece—a rock, or what not—and after her cavatina she would fall on the stage as if fainting, and drag herself to the back of the rock and drink; ah, how she would drink!”